Gimmickry Thy Name Is Film Promotions

Filmi Fanatic

Rewind yourself to the olden times when if a new film was released, one would only get to know it through the show timings in the newspaper or through the big colourful hand painted posters in front of the cinema halls. That was the only promotion any film would get and still they went on to complete 25 weeks or 50 weeks at the box office.

Now, fast forward to the present times where film promotions have become more like a marketing thing in the film making aspect. Now you have directors announcing on social medias about their films going on floors in year 2035…and then during the shooting of the movies, we get to see the snippets of it on either the actor’s insta stories or some small peek which goes viral on the social media within few minutes.

And once the film is completed, oh God the line of promotions is so big that it goes on even when the film is released. So, you have like the actors promoting the film on all sorts of reality shows or the soap operas on the small screen. And if all this is seemingly less, they rope in their industry friends and make a dubsmash video or the industrywallahs start tweeting on their twitter handles showing their so called ‘excitement ‘for the upcoming movie. The teaser of the film first is unveiled, then the poster, then one or 2 songs and finally the trailer of the movie is released in some big way in some lavish auditorium or stadium and mind you it’s just the trailer!!!

But even all this excitement built up and promotional gimmicks, why do these films only run a week or so? Why do they get erased so quickly from the minds of the audience unlike the earlier movies? Are we overdoing the promotions, or are the story lines so weak that all these marketing gimmicks are needed? Can there be any movie which can run without these promotions and just on their story and still do well… time to introspect…